[In the following essay, Wills explores the role of Christ and the theme of suffering in Endō's works.]

In his book A Life of Jesus Shusaku Endo talks of Jesus' compassion for those who were suffering in terms of his ‘suffering with them, carrying their burdens with them, becoming an eternal companion for them’.¹ In several of his novels this understanding of Christ as one who suffers alongside humanity is given extraordinary dramatic power. The image of eternal companion is not explicitly discussed but it seems to underlie many of the themes which Endo employs, providing a remarkably versatile vehicle for his creative exploration of how God's power in Christ can transfigure human lives, bringing the possibility of hope and re-creation.

Christ is understood as the one who, through the suffering of his life and death, has identified fully with the sufferings of all humanity and, by means of this identification, offers the reality of present hope to those who suffer; one who reflects the ‘maternal aspect’ of God's tenderness and compassion and mediates this tenderness to those engulfed by fear or shame; one who in his vulnerability and foolishness challenges the world's concepts of power and wisdom; one who has passed through the confines of death so that he is able to make real for his followers the ‘tangible realisation’ of his presence. The novels speak as literature: we cannot expect to analyse and assess them in the same way as we would a theological argument, but as we respond to their imaginative or dramatic power we may discover much to enrich our Christology.

In many of Endo's novels there is an acute perception of the depths of human suffering. This suffering takes many different forms, often caused by external forces, but the deepest pain of mental and spiritual anguish comes from loss of hope and faith as time after time Endo traces the stripping bare of human hearts. In Silence the central theme is that of God's apparent silence in the face of the unendurable and seemingly endless suffering of his children.

We are made to enter into the agony of the hunted priest Rodriguez for whom the sea becomes the image of God's silence, raising in him the persistent, tormenting question of whether in fact God exists. When he watches the death of the Japanese Christians Mokichi and Ichizo, tied to stakes at the sea's edge, the emphatic power of Endo's restrained, bare prose conveys the sense of Rodriguez' desolation as every detail of landscape and figure adds to the searing pathos of the scene. The inexorable movement of the tide completing its terrible task is emphasised by the silence which images God's silence.

This silence plagues Rodriguez through one harrowing experience after another, attacking him with culminating ferocity when he listens to the groaning of the Japanese Christians in the terrible torture pit and is told that he alone can save them. It is the power of this dramatic build up of tension inexorably pursuing Rodriguez which gives such force to the critical scene where the silence is eventually broken when the priest places his foot on the fumie² and hears the bronze Christ invite him to trample on his face. Through the agony of his torment in committing this act of apostasy Rodriguez hears the tender voice of Christ speaking to him: ‘Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross.’³ This compassionate, suffering Christ lies at the heart of Endo's Christology.

For Rodriguez, as for Job, conventional religious arguments about the reasons for suffering are completely undermined by the stark reality of innocent suffering borne inescapably in upon him. For Job questions of theodicy remain unanswered but God's self-revelation is enough, for his deepest need is answered when God's silence is broken. Similarly, the words of the bronze Christ to Rodriguez offer no explanation as to why the Christians have had to endure such torture, yet they are the moment of transformation for the priest's faith, for they show that he has not been abandoned by God. In the lonely agony of his journey he has felt his suffering was a sign of God's absence; now the voice of the fumie declares that God's presence is to be found within that very suffering. Rodriguez had expected God to break through the silence, to intervene with a mighty act to deliver his followers from their agony. Such a God is indeed absent, but Endo finally points to a positive interpretation of this absence by suggesting that Rodriguez has been seeking God in the wrong place: he discovers that God is to be known not as mighty Creator but as the Christ of the fumie, a God revealed in a face that has been trampled upon by countless feet.

This face is very different from the pure and beautiful face of Christ that Rodriguez has treasured all his life:

‘It was not a Christ whose face was filled with majesty or glory; neither was it a face made beautiful by endurance of pain; nor was it a face filled with the strength of a will that has repelled temptation. The face of the man who then lay at his feet was sunken and utterly exhausted.’⁴

In the compassionate eyes of this ‘new’ face Rodriguez discovers Christ as the eternal companion who was not absent but suffering beside him.

Unlike Job Rodriguez does not have a triumphant restoration of good fortune. Rather there is sadness and loss in his realisation that he will never again return to his native land, in his rejection by the church and in his restricted life in prison. This points us to a critical feature of Endo's Christology. Many of his novels question the triumphalism of much that he sees portrayed in traditional Western Christianity. Against this portrayal he shows the victory of Christ as inseparable from the suffering, vulnerable, crucified Christ, the Christ of the fumie.

In this Christ we are offered the creative possibility of understanding the atonement as God's way of sharing in the agony of his creation, an understanding such as that explored by Frances Young. She suggests we might understand the meaning of Christ's death as ‘God bearing the painful consequences of his own act of creative love’ and ‘the cross as indeed a symbol of all the pain that ever was, but more than a symbol—a kind of gathering up of all pain, a reservoir of all pain which becomes God's way of sharing the agony and ecstasy of his creation’.⁵ Endo's narrative realises in a dramatic way how such a sharing might transform the lives of men and women. Transformation for Rodriguez comes not through escape from suffering but in the realisation that God shares in his agony. It is this which enables him to continue living after his apostasy with hope and not despair.

The face of Christ revealed in the fumie is strongly reminiscent of the portrayal of the suffering servant in Isaiah chapter 53, a face not marked by majesty and beauty but marred by ugliness and pain. Such a face also plays a critical part in Endo's novel The Samurai. Here Endo traces the two contrasting inner journeys of the humble Japanese samurai Hasekura, raised in a tiny marshland in seventeenth century Japan, and Velasco, the ambitious Catholic priest filled with a zeal to spread the Gospel by ‘strategy and diplomacy’ to Japan.

In the bewildering and often distressing events of his journey across the world as an envoy Hasekura seems almost to be pursued by the face of Christ which seems to him utterly foreign and repulsive. For Hasekura reverence and respect were commanded by the figures of his overlords, men of power who controlled his life by a mere word. They represented true majesty. He can feel no interest or concern for the man Jesus, the ‘loathsome, emaciated man’ he sees on the crucifixes in the churches of Mexico and Spain. Driven by desperation to try at all costs to succeed in the mission entrusted to him he eventually succumbs to Velasco's pressure to be baptised, but he does so in outward form only, still believing that ‘this ugly, emaciated man—devoid of majesty, bereft of outward beauty, so wretchedly miserable’ has nothing to do with him.⁶

It is striking how time and time again Endo stresses this picture of the ugly, emaciated Christ rather than the Christ of glory or majesty and it is this image which eventually does become filled with rich meaning for Hasekura. However it is only after his return home, when the agonies of his wasted journey are compounded by the betrayal of the Council of Elders in whom he had placed his trust that he begins to look upon Christ with different eyes. He recognises in himself a deep yearning for ‘someone who will be with you throughout your life, someone who will never betray you, never leave you’.⁷ Endo's concept of Christ as the ‘eternal companion’, which we have seen in Silence is most poignantly portrayed in the closing pages of this novel when Hasekura, made the scapegoat for his masters' political schemes, realises he is going to be killed. The strained voice of his faithful servant Yozo, who has accompanied his master on all his journeys but can no longer do so, speaks behind him: ‘From now on—He will be beside you’: ‘From now on—He will attend you.’ With a delicately restrained touch Endo allows these simple, broken sentences to express the conviction that Christ is an eternal companion, whilst the information that finally Hasekura himself shares that conviction is expressed with equal restraint: ‘The samurai stopped, looked back, and nodded his head emphatically. Then he set off down the cold, glistening corridor towards the end of his journey.’⁸

The reasons for Endo's emphasis on the image of Christ as ‘ugly’ and ‘emaciated’ are made explicit in The Samurai in the words of the renegade Japanese monk working amongst the poor Indians in Mexico. Answering the envoys' puzzled questions as to how he could worship someone so ugly and emaciated he says:

‘I can believe in Him now because the life he lived in this world was more wretched than any other man's. Because he was ugly and emaciated. He knew all there was to know about the sorrows of this world. He could not close His eyes to the grief and agony of mankind. That is what made Him emaciated and ugly. Had he lived an exalted, powerful life beyond our grasp, I would not feel like this about Him.—He understands the hearts of the wretched, because His entire life was wretched. He knows the agonies of those who die a miserable death, because He died in misery.’⁹

It is Christ's ability to enter into and to share the experiences of suffering and wretched human beings which is the focus of much of Endo's imagery. Thus Hasekura can compare him to ‘a sick, mangy dog’ because he also sees that Christ—‘that man’—‘became such a miserable dog for the sake of mankind’.¹⁰ Like Isaiah's descriptions of the suffering servant these images strip away all the vestiges of human dignity from the figure of Christ but they also emphasise his humility and loyalty. Indeed in the figure of Yozo, who even before he becomes a Christian has many Christlike qualities, inarticulate humility and unquestionable loyalty are shown to have their own deep dignity.

Velasco is a very different character from Hasekura. Like Rodriguez, he is at first confident in his Christian faith; as for Rodriguez it is when this faith is deeply challenged and he is near to despair, ignoring the Church's strictures, that we sense in him a deeper faith, born of anguish in the face of harsh reality. For when he is made aware of Tanaka's suicide Velasco obeys a deeper prompting and disobeys the Church to perform an act of mercy for the dead samurai. As he responds in compassion to the needs of another, Velasco discovers a new meaning for his life, recognising that ‘a priest lives to serve others in this world, not for his own sake’.¹¹

Again, as in the picture of Yozo, the image of ministering to others predominates, an image which has deliberate echoes of the words of Christ: ‘I am come to minister unto many—and to give them life’. ‘I have suggested that Endo's depiction of Christ is strongly reminiscent of Deutero-Isaiah's portrayal of the suffering servant. Both the elements of suffering and servanthood are important in Endo's Christology: they are inextricably linked. In Velasco's and Yozo's service to others we are able to see a reflection of the truth about Christ—for both such service involves suffering, but in this suffering there is the possibility of giving life to others.

Unlike Rodriguez and Ferreira Velasco does not apostasise; he returns to Japan knowing that in doing so he will face death and, despite his fear, he remains true to his faith, going undaunted to a martyr's death at the stake. However, to say as Van Gessel does that Velasco, ‘once he has cast off his pride, is allowed to worship and serve a glorified Christ with a rational and aggressive faith’,¹² is I think to misunderstand the novel. It is to overlook a critical scene whilst Velasco is in prison awaiting his death. In this scene a fellow prisoner, a Dominican missionary, dies a degrading and wretched death and, watching his pitiful body being removed by the guards Velasco comments:

‘As I watched the scene—I had a flash like a revelation from Heaven. This was reality. No matter how much we try to camouflage or idealise it, the real world is as wretched as the dirt-stained, mud-caked corpse of Father Vasquez. And the Lord did not avoid this reality. For even the Lord died covered in sweat and dirt. And through his death, He cast a sudden light upon the realities of this world.’¹³

It is in the light of this understanding that Velasco sees a purpose in his own death. It cannot therefore be seen as Van Gessel sees it as ‘an undiluted reflection of his dynamic Western beliefs’. Although his manner of dying and his journey of faith may take a very different form from those of Hasekura, in this crucial perception of Christ as not avoiding but sharing ‘miserable reality’ they concur. Here, as so often in Endo's novels, there is a touchstone for what may be seen as the true image of Christ.

In the very different world of Endo's novel The Wonderful Fool a similar picture of Christ emerges. Set in modern day Japan Christ himself is never mentioned but, throughout the novel the enigmatic figure of the awkward, foolish, vulnerable Frenchman, Gaston, displays important Christlike features. His actions—ridiculously foolish in the eyes of contemporary Japanese society—are used by Endo to question our notions of foolishness and wisdom. His refusal to retaliate when attacked by the gang of thugs; his devotion to the stray mongrel; his intervention to prevent Endo murdering the man he holds responsible for his brother's death and, supremely, his determination not to desert the gangster whatever the cost to himself, provide us with an alternative set of values. In the eerie scene in the swamp when Gaston saves Endo's life by interposing his body between him and the sharp blows of Kobayashi's shovel the image of Christlike vulnerability and self-sacrifice is powerfully portrayed. Is such action sheer folly or do we see here ‘Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God’?¹⁴

In other novels we have seen how Endo portrays Christ as meeting people especially in their weakness and suffering and entering into that suffering with them. Here Gaston's attempts to help the Tokyo prostitute, his meeting with the old diviner, his compassion for animals and children and especially the involvement with the murderer Endo—all quite incomprehensible to the ordinary members of Japanese society—reveal a similar idea in a modern setting. In the light of the book's final image—Tokamori's vision that Gaston will return some day to ‘take upon his back once more the sorrows of people like these’—we might fairly view these actions as echoes of Christ's shouldering of his cross for the sake of suffering humanity.

If the image of eternal companion provides Endo with a means of expressing his conviction that Christ enters into and shares humanity's suffering, it also offers a way of exploring how human beings can experience salvation. Novels such as When I Whistle and The Sea and Poison show that Endo has a deep realisation of the depths of sin and evil, but whereas their mood is predominantly one of pessimistic foreboding, Scandal traces the possibility of salvation even in the face of ‘the fathomless pit’ of evil ‘yawning at the bottom of the human heart’.¹⁵

In this novel the ‘fathomless pit of evil’ is given vivid and horrifyingly specific form in Madame Naruse's sadistic pleasure in the thought of the screams of the women and children dying in the flames of fires set alight by her soldier husband; a thought which enflames her sexual desire. It is seen, too, in Motoko's masochistic obsessions as she discovers ecstasy in the violence perpetrated on her. At the culmination of the novel's action Suguro, the central character, has to admit this evil within himself as he watches his shadowy imposter—now inescapably identified as himself—seeking to derive vitality from the young girl Mitsu's body, sucking at her body and tightening his hands around her throat to strangle her. This acknowledgment of evil in himself is starkly, insistently portrayed in the sentences where Suguro faces his complicity in the evil of Madame Naruse's husband and in the mob's violent rejection of Jesus. In words of searing accusation he identifies himself as the one who—‘set fire to the huts of women and children’, the one ‘who cast stones at the frail, bloodied man who bore a cross’.¹⁶

As for the priests Rodriguez and Velasco, the possibility of hope for Suguro seems first to necessitate self-knowledge. All these characters who have grown up within the Christian faith go through a process in which their previously comfortably held beliefs are stripped away. Rodriguez makes his lacerating journey into the silence of God; in his final confession Velasco acknowledges his haughty pride and delusion. For Suguro the journey to self knowledge is complex for it is portrayed through the sneering face and depraved actions of his double, the ‘imposter’ who haunts and pursues him throughout the novel. It is only finally after his horror at his response to Mitsu at the hotel that he has to admit that this double is in fact an aspect of himself and he accepts ‘this filthiness as a part of himself’. He realises, too, that now he has ‘to begin searching for evidence of salvation even within this filthiness’.¹⁷

If Endo suggests that for these characters this self knowledge is a prerequisite of salvation he does not imply that in itself it is the means to salvation. This can be clearly seen from the comparison with the figure of the disgraced priest, Durand, in Volcano. Like Velasco, Durand is brought to a sharp realisation that his earlier religious zeal has caused him to abuse and harm others. But for Durand self-knowledge leads not to a transformed faith but to loss of faith, disillusion and bitterness: he becomes a man who takes a perverse pleasure in taunting and tempting others and finally commits suicide. In contrast to this we might set the experience of Rodriguez where the voice of the fumie transforms his faith. Durand equates the whole of Christianity with his former false understanding of it, so when this fails him he rejects Christ, whereas Rodriguez is open to discover a ‘new’ Christ.

The hope Suguro finds in the confused realisation of the depths of darkness in his own heart is not as clearly linked to Christ as it is for Rodriguez. Rather it is conveyed through Endo's use of imagery and restrained, evocative description. As he walks down the wintry street, consumed with horror at himself, Suguro sees his ‘double’ ahead of him:

‘The man did not turn his way, but kept walking intently towards Sendagay. A myriad white flecks hit by the streetlights whirled ahead of him. The thin flakes of snow seemed to emit a profound light. The light was filled with love and compassion, and with a maternal tenderness it seemed to envelop the figure of the man. His image vanished.

He (Suguro) felt a rush of vertigo. He peered into the space where the man had disappeared. The light increased in intensity and began to wrap itself around Suguro; within its rays the snowflakes sparkled silver as they brushed his face, stroked his cheeks and melted on his shoulders.’¹⁸

The light here is not sharp and penetrating but ‘filled with love and compassion’, an effect emphasised by the warmth of verbs such as ‘envelop’, ‘wrap’, ‘brushed’ and ‘stroked’. Perhaps the fact that the light first envelops Suguro's double suggests that even the depraved evil ‘filthiness’ of this aspect of himself is not beyond redemption.

In this description Christ is not mentioned; the image of light is allowed to speak for itself, yet, significantly, Suguro's response to this experience is ‘O Lord have mercy!’ There are also fascinating links between this passage and a comment made by Endo: ‘I tried not so much to depict God in the father-image that tends to characterise Christianity, but rather to depict the kind-hearted maternal aspect of God revealed to us in the personality of Jesus.’¹⁹ Does the ‘maternal tenderness’ of the light enveloping Suguro's double suggest Endo's perception of the ‘maternal aspect of God’ which he sees as revealed in Jesus? Is this therefore for Suguro an experience parallel to Rodriguez’ discovery of Christ in the fumie? We are given no explicit answer to these questions but we might well surmise that this is so.

The path to hope is somewhat different in the case of Hasekura. Unlike Rodriguez, Velasco and Suguro, he does not have to re-learn the Christian faith, nor is there an emphasis upon his need for self-knowledge. Certainly his experiences ‘strip him bare’, but it is his trust in his lord and the Council of Elders, deeply rooted in his family tradition, which is shown as worthless. However, like them, his discovery of hope springs both from a painful recognition of reality and from an awareness of need. Different images are used to convey hope—an enveloping light, the voice of Christ speaking from the fumie, a friend who remains faithful even beyond death—but for all of them this hope comes through the conviction that they are ultimately not abandoned. We may therefore posit that this conviction is central to Endo's understanding of the hope of salvation.

The example of Hasekura highlights an interesting aspect of Endo's presentation of the way to salvation. There seems to be no particular emphasis on repentance as a prerequisite of God's forgiveness. Self-knowledge is not the same as repentance: in the moment when Rodriguez hears the voice of the fumie he is not convicted of sin nor called to repentance; although Suguro is filled with shame at his depravity the enveloping light does not focus on that depravity. Indeed in Endo's novels there seems little concern for God's anger at sin.

In this there is a striking contrast with the theology of the Japanese theologian, Kazoh Kitamori. At first Kitamori's concern to emphasise the pain of God might seem very close to Endo's approach, for the Christ of the fumie surely suggests a sharp realisation of the pain of God. Yet for Kitamori God's pain springs from the conflict within himself between his love and his wrath: God's wrath against sin is given considerable prominence in his thinking. Here he still seems to be focussing on the image of God as a stern father, however much that father may be torn between love and wrath. Endo's understanding in his novels is closer to the view which elsewhere he attributes to Jesus: ‘He believed that God by his nature was not in the image of a stern father, but was more like a mother who shares the suffering of her children and weeps with them.’²⁰ This view is perhaps given most forceful expression in the novels in Rodriguez' final understanding of Jesus' response to Judas. Rodriguez sees the command of Jesus—‘What thou dost do quickly’—not as the voice of judgment for this act of betrayal—so often seen as the epitome of human sin and therefore most deserving of God's wrath—but rather as the voice of compassionate understanding. He hears Jesus explaining to him: ‘Just as I told you to step on the plaque, so I told Judas to do what he was going to do. For Judas was in anguish as you are now.’²¹ It is this compassionate understanding which opens up the possibility of transformation and salvation.

Endo has a sharp awareness of the horrifying power of evil, an awareness also found in the contemporary Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, yet a comparison between Endo's novels and Mishima's Runaway Horses shows they have sharply contrasting views of salvation. For Mishima hope appears to lie in a return to traditional Japanese standards and pieties. He places great emphasis upon purity and the nobility of those who attempt to purge evil by force and are willing to offer themselves as sacrifices in the ritual suicide of ‘seppuku’. For Endo hope is found amidst those who could be considered far from pure and noble. Salvation comes not from an individual's efforts to purify himself, nor from a fierce opposition to evil and corruption, but in the recognition of being loved. The strength and power of this love reveals itself in different ways, not always explicitly Christological, yet its characteristics are those which find supreme expression in the Christ of the fumie. Sacrifice is not demanded by the gods of human beings; rather it is of the very nature of divine love itself which, through its compassionate ‘suffering-for’ and ‘suffering-with’, elicits a response which transforms the one who responds.

It is this transforming power which gives incarnational force to Endo's Christology. His stress upon the suffering and wretchedness of Jesus' life might lead us to question whether he sees Jesus only as a man, however good and noble, rather than as God himself. If the face of the fumie, or of the ‘emaciated, ugly man’ which haunts Hasekura is so emphatically the face of a suffering man can it also be the face of God? It is when we consider the change that appears in Suguro that any doubts can be answered for here, to borrow some words from T. F. Torrance, salvation penetrates ‘to the underlying structures of human existence’, effecting a ‘profound cleansing of the roots of human conscience’ and the ‘radical transformation or rebirth of human being’.²² In such a change we can perceive the salvific power of God. In the case of Rodriguez, too, the transformation wrought by the fumie is no mere superficial change but a paradigmatic shift, as is indicated by his altered attitude to the Judas-like figure Kichijiro and the fundamental difference in his perception of Christ.

Grace is clearly a central element in Endo's soteriology; the vulnerable, suffering love of the eternal companion offers hope of salvation with no demand even for repentance. Salvation is always a gift and never merited. However, the lack of any emphasis on God's judgment of sin raises the question of whether this is cheap grace. The stress placed on Christ's suffering both in his life and on the cross underline the costliness to God of this free offering of grace, but it is a cost which stems from the extent of God's identification with suffering humanity rather than from a struggle between wrath and love within God himself, caused by the requirement that sin must incur judgment. Grace is not cheap, but I would question whether, however powerfully he may convey the effects of evil, Endo takes seriously enough the depth of human sin in its communal manifestations within the very structures of society.

Salvation for Endo is seen primarily in personal, individual terms. He describes in realistic detail the harsh realities of his characters' lives—whether these are the tortures inflicted upon the early Japanese Christians, or the slums of modern Tokyo—but, in striking contrast to contemporary Liberation theologians, he does not see the structures which produce these realities as being directly challenged by Christ. It is not that Endo shows no concern for the poor and oppressed; indeed, as an examination of Wonderful Fool showed, Christ is seen as being particularly involved with the outcasts of acceptable society, ‘taking upon his back’ their sorrows. However this involvement is interpreted in terms of acts of compassion and tenderness towards individuals, rather than as solidarity with the oppressed.

Resurrection is also presented in Endo's novels in terms of the essentially individualistic image of Christ as eternal companion. In A Life of Jesus Endo writes that the scene of the resurrection is ‘the pivotal point of the passion narrative and indeed the key to the entire New Testament’.²³ It is pivotal, I would suggest, because it is through the resurrection that Christ was able to become humanity's eternal companion, the one who could accompany his followers in this life and even beyond death.

In commenting on the Emmaus story Endo describes the disciples' vivid feeling that Jesus was still very close to them as a ‘non-metaphysical, tangible realisation’.²⁴ This would also be an apt description of Rodriguez' experience in Silence, not only in the critical scene with the fumie but also later in the conversation with Jesus about Judas. It is the vivid reality of this presence which makes the meaning of Christ's past suffering on the cross so powerfully relevant to Rodriguez' predicament, transforming his faith.

Life after death is assumed in Endo's novels but it is not explored in the same depth as questions about suffering or evil. In Scandal Suguro's ambiguous attitude towards death is reflected in dreams: first in the dream of being pursued in fog and later in the dream where he is being driven powerfully out from the protective environs of his mother's womb towards the cervix and birth. In both dreams there is fear and yet also the image of light which conveys hope—light shines through the cervical opening and in the fog a soft light brings an indescribable peace which prompts Suguro to wonder whether this is death. In this dream although Christ himself is not mentioned the light is expressly linked with some of Christ's words: ‘There was not a trace of menace or condemnation in the light that enfolded him in its arms. It was the incarnation of tenderness. “Come unto me—for I am meek and lowly in heart.” The voice was like, and yet in some ways unlike, that of the old priest.’

This passage may suggest that Endo sees Christ as still being present beyond death, continuing to welcome and embrace those who seek him, but the image is left to speak through its own delicate strokes: it is suggestive rather than dogmatic.

This is true also of Endo's treatment of Hasekura in The Samurai. His journey towards death is seen as ‘setting off for another unknown land’.²⁵ There are no images of what that land may hold for him but there is Yozo's voice assuring his master, ‘From now on—He will be beside you.’ Once again it is the image of eternal companion which seems best to express Endo's Christology. There is hope after death not because there are clear pictures of Paradise or heaven—all is unknown—but because whatever the future may hold Christ is to be found there journeying with us.

Fumitaku Matsuoka sees Endo's understanding of the resurrection as ‘God's eternal accompaniment’ as peculiarly Japanese in character.²⁶ Endo himself sees his depiction of Jesus in A Life of Jesus as being rooted in his being a Japanese novelist,²⁷ whilst there are striking similarities between his Christology and Kosuke Koyama's emphasis on ‘the spat-upon Jesus Christ’ and ‘the torn and mutilated Christ’ who ‘heals the broken world’.²⁸

However, his vision of Christ is by no means relevant only to a Japanese context. His insights transcend the limits of a particular culture. The medium of fiction, which allows Endo to provide such penetrating explorations of his characters' inner journeys, also enables the reader to address questions of theodicy and salvation central to Christology. The figure of the trampled-upon Christ of the fumie, the eternal companion accompanying Hasekura on his final journey into the unknown regions of death, the tender light enveloping Suguro: all pose for us with arresting force the central question of all Christology, Jesus' question to Peter: ‘Whom do you say that I am?’

Notes

1. A Life of Jesus (London, Pantist Press, 1973) p. 85.

2. A fumie is a figure representing Jesus mounted on a piece of wood or copper plate. Japanese authorities in the seventeenth century forced those suspected of being Christians—under threat of torture—to trample on the fumie, thereby proving either that they were not Christians or that they were renouncing their allegiance to Christ.

3. Silence (Tokyo, Sophia Univ. Press, 1969) p. 271.

4. Ibid. p. 276

5. Can These Dry Bones Live? (London, SCM, 1982) p. 58.

6. The Samurai (London, Peter Owen, 1972) p. 167.

7. Ibid. p. 245.

8. Ibid. p. 262.

9. Ibid. p. 220.

10. Ibid. p. 245.

11. Ibid. p. 215.

12. In the postscript to the English translation of The Samurai p. 271.

13. The Samurai p. 254.

14. 1 Corinthians 1 v. 25.

15. Scandal (London, Peter Owen, 1988) p. 129.

16. Ibid. p. 217.

17. Ibid. p. 221.

18. Ibid. p. 222.

19. In the preface to the American edition of A Life of Jesus p. 1.

20. A Life of Jesus p. 80.

21. Silence p. 297.

22. The Mediation of Christ (Exeter, Peternoster Press, 1983) p. 72-73.

23. A Life of Jesus p. 156.

24. Ibid. p. 174.

25. The Samurai p. 262.

26. Theology Today October 1982 p. 294.

27. A Life of Jesus p. 1.

28. No Handle on the Cross p. 8 and p. 38.